


Public Enemy Number One

by idelthoughts



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Crossover, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-10-11
Packaged: 2017-11-16 02:40:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/534566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idelthoughts/pseuds/idelthoughts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The prisoner drew himself up tall and faced them squarely. “Yes, I am the Doctor.” He looked Jack up and down with a stern expression, and his voice was heavy with scorn. “And you’re Torchwood.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on my [Teaspoon profile.](http://www.whofic.com/viewuser.php?uid=13831)

“So then she calls again — third time this week — from the store with another ‘perfect’ outfit for her future grandchild,” Gwen ranted, her voice ringing loudly in the open space of the Torchwood Hub. “Wants to know if she should be planning for a winter baby or a summer baby, so she can buy the right size.”

Ianto looked at her blankly, as was his usual way when she spoke of her personal life. Bless him, Ianto was a great one to have at your back in a crisis, but he was rubbish at office gossip in the downtime. There were days when she missed giggling over coffee with Tosh, or Owen's snide rejoinders.

She sighed and looked over at Jack, who was chuckling into his coffee. He leaned back in his chair and threw his feet up on the nearby desk, and took another sip of his drink.

“I will never understand how, for a society that has the ability to control reproductive functions, you still can’t manage to separate it from marriage and sex. Three different things, yet you’re all constantly mixing them up like they’re one and the same.”

“My mother-in-law, not me,” corrected Gwen. “And they’re not completely separate, Mr. Advanced Specimen of Humanity. Surely even where you’re from, there was the odd nagging baby-hungry wannabe grandma.”

Jack nodded, waving his coffee cup. “Oh sure, I suppose. But I was from colonial stock; slightly different set of ideals. The rest of the galaxy was always more civilized.”

Both she and Ianto froze at the highly unusual tidbit of information on Jack’s past. They exchanged a look, their curiosity piqued. They were getting very good at tag-teaming and prying information out of Jack, and this might be a good time to employ some of their learned tactics.

“Oh no, don’t even start,” Jack said with a groan, flopping his feet back down onto the floor and standing up.

“We’re just curious, Jack!” Gwen protested.

A beep sounded from Jack’s wristband before he could reply. He looked at it in surprise, but then that looked morphed into delight as he brandished at Gwen and Ianto. “Saved by the bell. It’s picking up an encoded transmission. I’m going to go run it through the software.” With an unapologetic grin he dashed off up the stairs to his office.

Gwen called after him. “You can run, but you can’t hide, Harkness!”

“Watch me!” Jack whooped back, and noisily shut the door to his office.

Gwen grumbled as Ianto laughed softly. She turned to him. “Are you holding out on me? Do you know more about him than you’re saying?”

Ianto gathered Jack’s abandoned mug, along with a few others scattered on the desk. “No more than you.”

“Doesn’t that bother you?” She leaned towards him, elbows on the desk. “What with you two being…” She waved a hand about, since she didn’t really know what to call them. “You know, involved.”

Ianto raised an eyebrow. “Sharing personal histories has never been very high on the to-do list.” His eyes went a bit unfocused. “Conversation in general, actually.” Ianto smiled faintly. He then blinked out of his reverie, continuing with his tidying effort.

Despite herself, Gwen blushed. Ianto’s implications aside, she was fairly certain he was more invested in Jack and their… relationship, arrangement — whatever they were calling it — than he was willing to let on. “Still, it would be nice to know, wouldn’t it?”

Ianto shrugged and smiled, but said nothing.

Her phone buzzed, indicating a text message received. She picked it up and cursed. “Bloody hell, not again. ‘50% off at Snips ‘n Snails — great deal on a car seat.’” She slammed the phone down with a frustrated noise.

“If you have a baby, I’m not staying in to babysit while you and Jack go out to do all the fun stuff,” Ianto asserted.

“Oh no,” she responded icily, still glaring at her phone. “Certainly not. I’m texting my mother-in-law back and asking her to pick up the Kevlar papoose instead. Baby and a gun — the modern face of attachment parenting.” She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose.

Ianto dropped a quick pat on her shoulder as he came past on his way to the kitchen. Rubbish at gossip or not, he was always good at providing support in his own way, and she gave him a quick smile of thanks.

Minutes later, she had her nose in a pile of reports and Ianto was rustling about in the kitchen when they heard a series of heavy, quick footfalls from the upper level. Ianto came into the main area, looking at Gwen in askance. They both froze as Jack’s door slammed open full-force, and he launched himself out and down the stairs.

“Jack, what’s wrong?” Gwen demanded, rising from her chair. From the corner of her eye she could see Ianto already checking the gun in the holster beneath his jacket.

“Do you both have your weapons?” Jack jumped the last five steps, sprinting over to them. He’d put on his greatcoat, and was busy tucking something into one of the inner pockets.

Gwen reached over and grabbed her gun out of her desk, shoving in a full ammunition clip and tucking it in her holster. “Do now. What’s going on?”

Jack grabbed Ianto on his way by and hauled him over to Gwen. “Prisoner exchange.” He looped each arm through one of Ianto’s and Gwen’s, tapping at his wrist strap. “You’re my escort guards. Hold tight, keep your mouths shut at all costs, and follow my lead.”

“But-“

That was all there was before a white hot flash, a sickening weightless feeling, and what might have been her lunch making a sudden reappearance.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Torchwood meets alien mercenaries and a very chatty prisoner.

Gwen trailed behind Jack, staring unabashedly around her. The ship was undeniably alien, crewed by aliens, even smelled alien. She and Ianto were as close to each other as they could possibly be without touching, hurrying after Jack so as not to be left behind in this disconcerting place.

The officer guiding them through the ship said something to Jack that Gwen didn’t catch — another language or just indistinct, she wasn’t sure — and Jack nodded sharply. They turned a final bend in the corridor and were ushered into a stark room with featureless blocks that likely served as chairs. Not much on aesthetics, this lot.

Jack nodded a quick thanks to the officer, who bowed and backed out of the room. The door closed — a regular door, Gwen noted. Somehow she’d expected sliding doors and automization everywhere. This felt a bit more like a spacious intergalactic submarine than a ship from a technologically advanced society.

“Sir,” Ianto began, shaking Gwen out of her stunned observations.

Jack shot him a quick glance, and Ianto shut his mouth on whatever question he was about to ask. He shifted to encompass Gwen in his gaze, and she too kept silent. Probably this place was under surveillance — if it were human, it certainly would be. Given the visible weapons and militaristic bent of their hosts, it was likely they had a healthy dose of paranoia in common with the human race.

“Questions at home. Do exactly as I say until then. Trust me, listen to me, and this all goes smoothly.” Jack’s tone and body language were uncharacteristically cool and remote, and there was a warning look that said this was one of those times they’d better listen, all joking aside.

Given how out of her depth Gwen felt right now, standing in a featureless room in a gunmetal grey space ship hovering above the Earth on a bizarre, unknown mission, she was willing to follow Jack’s direction without argument. For now, at least. He’d have some serious explaining to do when they got home. Why he hadn’t been able to wait five minutes to give them a briefing, she couldn’t imagine. She nodded her agreement.

Ianto was stoic, as usual. He looked completely unruffled, as though this were no stranger than a trip to the post office. “Yes, sir.”

The latch on the door clicked, and the door swung open. Four figures entered — the officer who had greeted them when they first boarded, as well as two more subordinate officers, indistinguishable beneath their grey helmets and grey uniforms. Held between these two, cuffed both hand and foot, as well as gagged, was the mysterious prisoner that had Jack in such a tizzy.

He was human. Gwen furrowed her brow. How had these aliens gotten hold of a human? Given the outer space police and Jack’s reaction, she’d been expecting tentacles, or claws. At least ten feet tall — or maybe some evil-looking super genius.

Certainly not some fit bloke in a suit who looked unreasonably pleased to be in chains. His eyes darted around the room and fixed on them, and he started to make muffled exclamations beneath the gag.

“Why is he gagged?” Jack asked severely.

The officer nearest them responded. “He wouldn’t stop talking. It was this or render him unconscious.”

Gwen saw Jack’s dimple make a brief appearance in what might have been a smile, but it was quickly gone. “Ungag him.”

There was a squeal of delight from beneath the gag, then more incomprehensible, excited mumbling. The man’s eyes were so impossibly bright it was almost comical. Gwen looked over at Ianto to express her amusement, but was surprised to find him stony-faced, staring at the prisoner with cold anger. She glanced back at the man, who was now making obscenely large stretching motions with his mouth.

“Oh! Oh thank goodness, I was getting right sick of that gag. You never realize how badly you need to say ‘can you scratch my right ear’ until there you are, bound and gagged,” he rattled off, barely pausing for breath.

Gwen’s eyebrows went up. This prisoner exchange kept getting more and more unlikely by the second.

“But where are my manners!” he cried. He tried to shuffle forward, but the guards at his sides held him firm by each arm. “Jack-Jackity-Jack, good to see you! I’d shake your hand, and those of your lovely friends there, but well, a bit tied up at the moment.” He nodded his head to either guard. “Don’t let the helmets put you off, they’re good blokes. Caught this one giving his mum a call to wish her a happy birthday. Isn’t that sweet?” He leaned over and smacked a great big kiss on the visor of the guard’s helmet. The guard jerked in surprise, managing to look irritated despite the blank, featureless helmet.

Jack took a step forward, and the prisoner was released from the guards’ grips, thrust forward to meet him. He stumbled a bit — converse trainers, Gwen noted, glancing down at her own — but caught himself adroitly. He leaned towards Jack, wide grin lighting his features. Whoever he was, he certainly knew Jack. Gwen could barely contain her burning curiosity, but she bit her lip and held herself in check, listening intently.

“So! Jack! We on our way then? I know you love a man in handcuffs, but do us a favour and release me, will you?” He twisted his upper body around, hopefully rattling the cuffs binding his hands behind his back.

Jack’s eyes never left the prisoner’s face as he reached into a pocket in his coat and pulled out an electronic pad. “You acknowledge that you are the being known as the Doctor?”

Ianto made a small noise like a cough, but didn’t move. Gwen felt extremely out of the loop — clearly Ianto knew whom this criminal was, though Gwen had never heard of him.

Jack’s words wiped the smile off the man’s face. It was a dramatic change to see the laughing, light-hearted exterior fall away. The prisoner drew himself up tall, facing Jack squarely, expression stern. Gwen felt suddenly glad he was bound. “Yes,” he said. “I am the Doctor.” He looked Jack up and down. “And you’re Torchwood.” His voice was heavy with scorn.

At her side, Ianto drifted and made a low, unpleasant noise. She glanced over at him, and then placed a light hand on his elbow. He shook it off, but masked his emotions once again. She wondered what could get to him like this — he was usually implacable in the face of their alien encounters. The only time she’d seen him crack had been during the cyberwoman incident. And really, it had been understandable, in its way.

Jack continued as though the Doctor had not spoken. “On behalf of Earth, I am here to take you into custody for crimes against humanity. Among the listed crimes, the attempted destruction of Sol 3 on no less than fifteen occasions-“

“Fifteen!” the Doctor interjected. “Give me some credit, I’m up to at least twenty-three by my count-“

“-and of personal note, the destruction of Torchwood One!” Jack’s voice grew steadily louder until he was shouting in the Doctor’s face. Gwen wondered if Jack would actually strike the other man, but he didn’t. Remarkably, the Doctor didn’t even blink in the face of Jack’s rage.

Jack replaced the pad into his pocket, and gestured to Gwen and Ianto. “Hold him. The Nitlott have agreed to aid in transporting him back to Torchwood. The Vortex manipulator is too risky.” He shot the Doctor a look. “He’s very good with technology. Don’t let your guard down for a second.”

“Yes sir.” Ianto stepped forward with a curt nod, taking hold of the Doctor’s bicep firmly.

The Doctor looked at him with raised eyebrows. “Aren’t you the enthusiastic little minion?” he said. “Yes sir, no sir, thank you very much, sir.” He looked slyly at Jack. “Bet you like that, eh Jack?” He turned back to Ianto, inspecting him closely, but Ianto didn’t flinch under the intense gaze. “How old are you anyway, twelve? Do you get the naughty step if you don’t follow orders?” He leaned closer to Ianto and sniffed him, which finally made Ianto twitch, a flash of anger crossing his face before he hid it again. “Hm, knowing Jack, more likely a spanking. Figures.”

A muscle twitched in Ianto’s jaw, and Gwen saw that his fingers were digging deeply into the Doctor’s arm. Finally she snapped out of her paralysis and moved to the prisoner’s other side, wrapping a hand around his arm.

“You don’t know when to quit, do you?” she muttered quietly, trying to pull his attention away from Ianto, who seemed one step away from losing his head and shooting the man on the spot.

The prisoner swung his head round to her. Up close she realized that he had a good foot on her in height. His direct scrutiny was shocking and intense. He seemed to be measuring her, taking her apart by sight alone. And then, he broke into a silly grin and winked at her — actually winked, the cheeky bugger. “I’ve been called many things, but never a quitter!”

“Gwen,” Jack said, and she tore herself away from the friendly, twinkling brown eyes that held her. Jack’s face was grim.

“Don’t talk to him, don’t trust him. Devious doesn’t even begin to cover it. Take him directly to Torchwood. Keep him in lockdown until I’m back. The chains stay on until he’s secured.”

She frowned, glanced back at the prisoner briefly, who was now fixed on Jack. Lord, but his attentions were intense. Despite Jack’s warning, she had to ask. “You’re not coming with us?”

“No. I have to stay and settle some paperwork — well, the nearest equivalent. Bureaucracy is the true universal constant.” His smile was thin, his entire attitude condescending and cool. In short, very un-Jack-like. “Get him home. We’ll deal with it when I’m back. Cell Five. Be sure to clear the block of weevils.”

Before they could move him, Jack stepped in front of the prisoner, pulling himself to his full height. “Behave,” he said with authority.

“What?” the Doctor said, affecting an innocent air. “I didn’t say anything.”

“Don’t make this any harder than it has to be.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” the Doctor responded, his tone mild. Gwen could feel the muscles of his arm flex under her hands, and she firmed up her grip in case he tried anything.

Jack nodded to Gwen, eyes still on the Doctor. “Take him.”

She nodded. The guard nearest her indicated their route to the shuttle with a wave of his (her?) arm, and they maneuvered the prisoner around and through the doorway.

The Doctor was unexpectedly quiet the whole way to the shuttle. After his relentless prattling earlier, it made the silence ring oppressively in her ears.

In the shuttle, there were three pairs of seats — two for the pilot and copilot, two behind that, and two in the back. The back right seat was equipped with two large metal rings, one protruding from the floor at its foot, the other from the back of the seat. With efficient movements the guard escorting them clipped the Doctor’s foot chains into the ring. He was pushed into the seat, and the chain between his hands was clipped to the smaller ring on the seatback.

The guard and another faceless, helmeted soldier - how did they tell each other apart, Gwen wondered - moved forward to the piloting seats. Gwen glanced at Ianto, but his face was still frozen in a blank mask that spoke of anger and barely contained stress.

She gently pushed him forward, indicating the middle seat to the left — the most space he could put between him and the Doctor for now. “Take it. I’ll sit here, keep an eye on him.”

Ianto let out a slow exhale through his nose, but nodded and took the seat. Gwen slid into her seat next to the Doctor, and they were off.

Next to her, the Doctor shifted, chain clinking at his back. “I don’t suppose you would reconsider the configuration? Only this ring is poking into my spine.”

She glanced over, and he gave her a hopeful smile. A perfectly true fact, a reasonable request from any prisoner — the right to comfortable transport conditions. But the engines were already humming as they pulled away from the mother ship bound for earth.

He leaned forward in his chair a little more, shifting awkwardly. She glanced forward at Ianto, and all she could see was the top of his head. They were all belted in, and she held the key.

It wasn’t until she held the key, warm in her hand and considering leaning across to unlock his hands, that Gwen remembered Jack’s warning. She tucked the key away in the pocket of her jeans. The Doctor watched the action, his shoulders relaxing slightly in a sigh that was lost under the hum of the engines.

She glanced at Ianto again, and leaned over to the Doctor, speaking quietly. “It’ll only be an hour.”

He looked at her with an expression of patience and forgiveness, as though he understood her dilemma. She was irritated with herself for feeling better for the fact that he wasn’t going to hold it against her. Ridiculous — if Jack was to be believed, this was possibly the most dangerous alien the human race had ever encountered, one that made Hitler and Pol Pot look like schoolyard bullies in comparison.

One that was currently singing George Michael songs quietly to himself. Well, could be worse, she supposed.

He switched to a full-throated rendition of a Spice Girls song, and she sighed.

It was worse. Fifty-nine more minutes to go.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Doctor spots a little shop, and Gwen gets filled in on a little Torchwood history.

The shuttle, thankfully masked from sight and detection by electronic means, dropped them off on Torchwood’s doorstep. After checking that his chains were still secure, the guards unclipped him from the circlets on the seat and floor.

“If he’s such a dangerous criminal, why not security measures that are a little more high tech?” Gwen asked one of the observing soldiers.

“This is what worked. Anything more advanced and he meddled with it. In the end, old-fashioned restraints worked.” The answer was muffled through the helmet’s venting grill, and Gwen got the impression that these soldiers rarely spoke — the helmets gave little thought to outward communication.

She hummed an acknowledgement and followed the group off the shuttle.

The tourist centre entrance was closest, and the less time spent exposed outside, the better. Ianto unlocked the door and went inside to make necessary code entries — out of the Doctor’s eyesight, of course — while Gwen held him outside. Her firearm sat holstered at her back, but she refrained from drawing it in order to keep it a surprise reserve, should it be needed at all. She settled instead for a firm grip on the prisoner’s arm.

The guards from the shuttle crowded at her back near the entrance, and she turned slightly to glare at them, not releasing her charge.

“Thank you for your help, but we’ll take it from here.”

There was a moment of quiet consternation from the guards, but Gwen didn’t budge.

The argument she was expecting didn’t come — it wouldn’t have mattered, she wasn’t about to let armed mercenaries into the Hub under any circumstances — and instead the soldiers snapped to attention and, in rigid formation, withdrew back to their shuttle. They loaded up and were quickly gone, rising into the air with a barely audible hum and shimmer of air, the only signs that escaped their masking field.

Gwen gave a little sigh. They had made her nervous, and she was glad to see the back of them. Any soldier that was for hire wasn’t worth hiring, in her opinion. She directed the prisoner through the door to the tourist office and the entrance to the Hub. Ianto wasn’t in sight, likely down and already prepping the cell for holding, moving the weevils as Jack had directed.

“I don’t suppose if I told you I was an old friend of Jack’s and this was all a big misunderstanding, it would make any difference?” the Doctor said hopefully as she opened the door to the tourist office entrance.

Gwen snorted, ushering him through. “In my experience, Jack’s friends are just as much trouble as his enemies — maybe more so. You won’t get far with that one.”

The Doctor made a noncommittal noise, but then abruptly squealed in delight. “Ooh! A little shop!” He twisted in Gwen’s grip, inspecting the dingy surroundings, looking dubious. “Hm. Bit dingy, isn’t it?” He leaned forward, squinting at a rack of pamphlets, and then wrinkled his nose. “Cardiff tourism hot-spots? Really? You can’t seriously tell me this is Torchwood’s brilliant cover.”

Gwen raised an eyebrow. “No one comes in, do they?”

He tipped his head to the side. “Point.” He caught sight of something from the corner of his eye and did an excited little dance, pulling out of Gwen’s grip and nearly upsetting a free-standing corkboard of key chains with picturesque Welsh scenery embedded in plastic squares. “Commemorative spoons!” he gushed, his voice sailing to an impossibly shrill height. “I used to collect spoons. You’d be surprised how many species think that spoons are a great way to remember the places you’ve been.” He turned back to Gwen with a small sigh. “Of course, when the spoon room filled up, I thought it might be time to get a different hobby.”

Gwen, getting nervous at all the sudden whirlwind action, crept a hand towards the holster at her waist, trying to cover the movement while the Doctor was still nattering on about spoons.

“Oh, I wouldn’t bother,” he said nonchalantly.

To her utter horror, he produced her gun from behind his back with one hand, and with the other hand he tossed his handcuffs on the floor. With what looked like a hook from the keychain pegboard he knelt and swiftly picked the locks on his leg irons, while releasing the bullet clip from her gun, and unchambered the one remaining bullet. He tossed the empty gun behind the shop counter and gave her a dazzling grin.

Gwen, hands frozen in the air, gaped at him. She backed up, trying to put space between them, assessing the risk of physical attack, her odds in a fight with him — he was taller, but didn’t look to be all that strong or heavy — and bloody hell, where was Ianto?

“Since that lot is gone, I’ll be on my way now!” he said cheerily. He nodded at the exit to the tourist office behind Gwen. He took one slow step towards the door, as though giving Gwen fair warning of his intended action. “Tell Jack thanks anyway for the hospitality, but, well…” he gave the pile of chains and restraints a little nudge with his foot. “I’ve stayed in better places. Still, little shop! Didn’t see that coming — very nice bonus.”

He managed one more step towards the exit before Ianto burst from the wheeled door entrance to the Hub. The Doctor began to turn as he saw Gwen’s eyes widen and dart behind him, but Ianto was already on him, and brained the Doctor across the back of the head with his gun. The alien crumpled like a tower of falling bricks, landing sprawled at Ianto’s feet, unconscious.

Gwen dropped her hands, breath released in a rush. “Oh, thank God, Ianto,” she panted. “I don’t even know how it happened, just one minute he was whizzing around, next thing I know he was free and had my gun.”

Ianto’s hand gripped his gun tightly, the same white, cold anger on his face as he stared at the prone alien. After a moment, he regained control of himself and looked up at Gwen. “Jack did warn us that he was devious.” He holstered his gun with a sigh. “Though I suppose now we’ll have to carry him down to the cells.”

They each took a set of gangly limbs and began the trek to the lower levels.

 

***

 

After the sweaty work of bodily hauling the unconscious alien down three levels to the cells below, Gwen flopped onto the couch in the main area of the Hub.

“Skinny he may be, but he’s not light,” Gwen grumbled, stretching her arms and back.

Ianto came around the corner out of the kitchen and tossed a water bottle into her lap, then collapsed onto the couch next to her. With sleeves rolled up and tie and waistcoat loose, he looked a shambles compared to his typically fastidious, buttoned down mien. He unscrewed the cap on his own bottle and took a long draught. He let his head drop against the back of the couch.

Gwen looked over at him curiously. “You going to tell me what’s eating you, are we going to pretend it’s nothing?” she asked. Ianto, ever the private soul, rarely let anything slip. That she’d even noticed his discomfiture could only mean it was really bothering him.

Ianto took another sip, straightening in his seat. “Do you know who the Doctor is?” he asked.

Gwen shrugged. “Beyond today and what Jack said, no.” She took in Ianto’s tense profile. “I’m guessing you do, then.”

Ianto shook his head. “No one really knows who he is, not really. I read up on him mostly out of curiosity, when I was at my first job. He’s littered throughout fictional and historical texts for all of human history. I’m sure most of it is rubbish, but some isn’t.” He leaned forward, setting his half-empty bottle on the table. “If it wasn’t for him, though, we wouldn’t be here. Torchwood, I mean. He crossed Queen Victoria back in the 1800s, and she founded the Torchwood Institute. Our number one directive from the beginning has always been to keep the Earth safe from alien threats — the greatest of which is the Doctor.”

Gwen took a long pull of her own water, thinking over what Ianto had said. “I don’t doubt you, but it’s hard to believe. One skinny git, upsetting the whole of human history? He hardly seems capable.”

Ianto turned to look at her, eyes hard. “You have no idea what he’s capable of.”

“And you have, then?” she returned, voice gentle, not wishing to press Ianto too hard.

He ducked his head, fiddling with the label on the water bottle. “Yes,” he finally answered. “When Torchwood One was destroyed.”

Silence fell between them, and Gwen decided to leave off for a bit, let Ianto tell her in his own time. She was surprised when he spoke again.

“The day I lost Lisa. The first time, anyway. Torchwood captured the Doctor. Like every story about him, wherever the Doctor is, disaster follows. He took Torchwood apart, brick by brick. He didn’t just destroy his enemies, he destroyed everybody.”

Ianto’s voice was shaking slightly, but otherwise he held himself with that iron control.

Gwen frowned. “Are you sure? One man hardly seems capable of that.”

Ianto just slumped back into the couch, staring blankly through the floor to where the cells lay below. “He’s the most dangerous thing I can imagine, and he’s just sitting there in a cell. It’s like trying to keep a hurricane in a paper bag. I should have killed him when I had the chance.”

Gwen let out a snort. “Most dangerous thing you can imagine, fine — but you just knocked him out with a good smack on the head,” she reminded him. “And he was captured in the first place. I’m not denying that he’s dangerous, but he’s clearly not invincible. He’s mortal, he makes mistakes, and right now, he’s contained.”

Ianto shook his head grimly. “We were lucky. Don’t fool yourself, he’s just as dangerous locked up — maybe more so. I can’t imagine what Jack was thinking.”

Gwen reached over and took hold of Ianto’s hand, clutching it tightly. Ianto glanced at her — his eyes were slightly red, but he was otherwise composed, as though the discussion was no more than exchanging recipes over tea. Still, she hung on firmly, until she felt his hand tighten briefly in returned acknowledgement.

“Trust Jack,” she said. “He put us onto this. He seems to know something about this Doctor bloke, and he wouldn’t bring him back here if he didn’t think we could contain him.”

Ianto smiled thinly. “Then we’d best keep him away from any more Cardiff souvenirs, lest he manage a jailbreak with a postcard and a badge of the _baner cymru._ ”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jack is regrettably delayed, Gwen has a chat with the Doctor, and Ianto loses his shit.

They were eventually roused off the couch by a beep from the communications system. It was a short, terse message from Jack saying that he was halfway through the release process, and to expect him back in four or so hours. Gwen read the message twice, but aside from the curt tone of it, there were no hidden codes indicating duress or any other problems. She supposed this unexpected delay was just another infuriating question she could add to the list of unanswered questions.

She keyed in an equally terse reply, letting him know that the prisoner was secure, and that they’d expect him back as soon as possible.

Ianto sought refuge in the order of the archives, intent on regaining his composure after his revealing conversation with Gwen. Though he’d given no indication, she thought he was embarrassed. She’d nodded her acknowledgement and said she’d check on the Doctor. At Ianto’s insistence, she took her reclaimed gun with her, and she was determined to keep track of it this time. Even so, she imagined there was little he could do with two inches of Plexiglas between them.

She arranged a tea tray and carried it down to the cell level. They rarely had prisoners other than the weevils, so choice for actual food was a bit limited. She managed to scrounge up something, though it wasn't exactly fresh.

The Doctor was sitting up on the narrow cot, rubbing the back of his head and wincing.

“Hello there,” Gwen said, stopping in front of the clear cell door.

“Hello… er, you know, in all this I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced.” He levered himself off the cot, making an unhappy grunt as the motion jostled his head. He approached the glass, and Gwen reminded herself that he was secure behind the glass, and that she needn’t step back. “I’m the Doctor, which I think you already know and I’ve already said. Gwen, was it?”

She smiled politely. “Gwen Cooper.”

He grinned widely at her. “Gwen Cooper. Now that’s a lovely name. A pleasure, Gwen Cooper!” He stuck two fingers through one of the ventilation holes drilled into the glass in his best attempt at shaking hands with her. She looked at his wiggling fingers dubiously, and he seemed to droop slightly with disappointment at her lack of enthusiasm.

He withdrew his hand and ran it around the back of his neck in a habitual motion, and winced once again. “Ow. And the name of the young man with the startlingly strong arm?”

She gave him an apologetic look. “That would be Ianto Jones. And though I’m sorry for your sore head, it could have been avoided if you’d have come quietly, without all that Houdini nonsense.”

“Ah, Houdini was a good sort. Taught him everything he knew — good eye,“ he said approvingly. The man didn’t half talk nonsense, she thought to herself. He shrugged. “Still, can’t blame a man for trying. But, manners notwithstanding, you’re still one of the more pleasant jailers I’ve had.” He pushed off the glass and gave his cell a once-over. “Can’t say the same for the accommodations. Two stars at best.”

“We’re rated three stars by Intergalactic Criminal Cruises Magazine,” she quipped dryly. “You haven’t tried the food yet, you see.”

He shot her an amused look, and then glanced at the tray in her hands. “Ah, right. Certainly wouldn’t say no.” He rubbed his hands together and backed up a few steps to give her clear access to the door.

If he’d been expecting her to open the door and provide him with an escape chance, he was about to be disappointed. She opened a small slot at the side of the door, which conveyed the tray in, and a matching slot sprung open in the cell.

“Ah,” was all he said, and if he was perturbed by the lack of opportunity, he didn’t show it.

The Doctor tucked into his dry sandwich, tea and stale biscuits with gusto, and Gwen wondered how long it had been since he’d been fed. The Doctor was munching on the second half of his sandwich when he noticed Gwen’s inspection.

“So,” he said around a mouthful, hastily chewing and swallowing, “is this it for me? Permanent holding? Or is this just a stopping point? Or am I going to be read my last rights, death at dawn by firing squad?” He looked down at the sandwich. “This isn’t my last meal is it? Because frankly, it’s a bit rubbish.”

She sighed. “I honestly don’t know. Jack will be back soon, and he’ll be able to tell you then.” He paused mid-bite at Jack’s name, then continued and chewed thoughtfully. Gwen considered leaving him to it, but her curiosity got the better of her. “How do you know Jack?” she asked, coming close to the cell door.

He took another bite of his sandwich, taking his time as he regarded her. She was just about to give up and leave when he said, “It’s a bit complicated.”

She felt her heart leap, presented with the opportunity to meet someone who knew about Jack. Then again, it seemed like everyone who knew Jack was an escaped murderous criminal. John Hart had been a liar, there was nothing saying this Doctor wouldn’t be one too.

“Okay,” she said. “Then how long have you known him?”

The Doctor leaned back on his cot, settling in with a hum. “Well, that’s an even harder question. Depends on who’s counting.”

She cocked her head, considering his answer. “Were you a Time Agent, then?”

The Doctor’s mouth dropped open in indignant affront. “Excuse me? Me, one of those rank amateurs? That — that is… quite frankly, I am offended.”

She set a hand on her hip and shook her head in annoyance, reprimanding herself for even thinking she might get a straight answer out of this nutcase. The Doctor took a sip of tea, eyes scanning her up and down. The look was considering, not hostile, and she tried again to reconcile his manic, cheerful exterior with the list of crimes Jack had read. She’d seen a hint of steel back on the mercenary ship, and he was clearly clever and quick, but a destructive megalomaniac?

She realized she was staring again when he set the cup aside and once more came to the cell door. He bent forward till his eyes were on level with hers, and she met his soft brown stare. He smiled slightly, corners of his eyes crinkling.

“What do you see, Gwen Cooper?” he asked quietly.

She inspected unruly, coiffed hair, the pinstriped suit, the freckles that dusted across his nose, the whimsical trainers. The picture of non-threatening geeky eccentricity. Harmless — or so he would have the world think.

“An unlikely mass murderer,” she answered.

He straightened slowly, a cool mask slipping over him. He tucked his hands in his pockets, looking at her silently. After a moment he looked away, and something unhappy flashed across his young features.

When he didn’t say anything more, she quietly cleared her throat. “I’ll be going now.”

He didn’t react at first, and then gave a short nod and turned away from the door, head bowed. She pursed her lips, but couldn’t think of anything else to say. She turned on her heel and left him to his thoughts.

 

***

 

When she made it upstairs, Ianto was looking at the communications station with a dark scowl. She could hear Jack’s tinny voice coming from the speaker, and it became clearer as she approached.

“-a bit longer than I thought. Paperwork like you’ve never seen.”

Ianto sighed. “Yes sir. Should we do anything with the prisoner? He’s in holding, but-“

“No, leave him there,” Jack said, sharply cutting Ianto off. He and Gwen exchanged a look, but neither of them understood the odd tone in his command. There were still no verbal cues indicating Jack was under duress, but it was clear he wasn’t speaking perfectly freely — likely he expected their communications were being monitored.

“Jack,” Ianto began. He licked his lips, choosing his words carefully. “I don’t think just leaving him in the cells is a good idea. I’m not sure if you realize what we’re dealing with-”

“I know exactly what we’re dealing with,” Jack said quickly, cutting him off again. Beneath the crackle of the open link they heard him sigh. “Look, I really can’t discuss this now. I’ll be home soon, just leave him be and don’t worry about it. It’ll keep until I get there.”

“That’s what Torchwood One thought,” Ianto said acidly.

Gwen laid a hand on Ianto’s shoulder. There was a hiss from Jack. “Shit. I’m sorry Ianto…it was such a rush. I forgot.”

“You forgot.” Ianto’s tone was icy.

“Yeah.”

There was an awkward silence from the communications unit, and Ianto made no reply, crossing his arms and turning away. Giving Ianto a worried glance, Gwen leaned towards the comm. “We’ll keep an eye, but get home soon. You sure everything’s okay?”

“Yeah,” Jack said, sounding distracted. “I have to go. Be in touch soon.” The link clicked closed.

Ianto stalked off to the Archives without a word. Gwen watched him until he disappeared around the corner, and then settled down at her desk. She called up a monitor feed from the cell block on one of her screens, keeping an eye on the prisoner while clearing up a backlog of her own work.

As much as she tried, her attention kept wandering off her work to the man in the cell. He looked so human, sitting against the back wall of his cell, arms on bent knees, looking bored out of his skull.

She shook her head, willing her attention back to her work. Her burning curiosity would keep until Jack was back. Not that Jack was exactly forthcoming with answers, but surely he could tell them something. Torchwood wasn’t usually in the business of playing prison warden long-term, and the Doctor’s list of crimes weren’t typically indicative of rehabilitation. Unless they were turning him over to someone else, the circumstances indicated a short, unhappy future for the Doctor.

The thought of Torchwood becoming judge, jury and executioner settled unpleasantly in her gut.

She looked back at the screen. The Doctor was standing now, moving towards the front of the cell. She leaned closer, trying to see what had caught his attention. He started gesticulating sharply, and Gwen realized he was speaking with someone.

Ianto. Oh, bollocks. She brought the volume up on the feed.

“-that I can’t bring them back. They made a mistake, one with consequences. For everyone. I am sorry, Ianto Jones.”

“Then why didn’t you stay and finish the job?” Ianto’s voice broke, fury and anguish bleeding through. “It would have been a small mercy, for people like my fiancée, half-converted, left to rot in those machines…”

Gwen was up and out of her chair in a flash, scrambling down the stairs to the bottom cell block level. Though she prayed Ianto had better sense than to do anything rash, she did not want to tempt fate, or find out how much goading Ianto’s grief could take from the man he clearly blamed for Lisa’s torture and disfigurement.

“Ianto!” She shouted down the corridor ahead of her, knowing he’d be able to hear her by now. She turned the last corner and sprinted towards the heavy door marking the cells and flung it open, and the sound of the Doctor’s light tenor came through.

“If you’d calm down and just listen-“

Ianto was close enough to the cell door that his nose was nearly pressed against the glass, and he cut the Doctor off sharply. “We’re just insects to you, is that it?” he accused, slamming a hand against the door.

“Ianto, leave off!” she barked sharply. He twitched, but didn’t look at her. He was slow to anger, but now that he had his ire up, there was no slowing him down.

Gwen barreled into Ianto, grabbing him by one shoulder and flipping him around, knocking him back against the cell door. He looked down at her, surprise briefly breaking through his blind fury.

Thankfully, that was all that was required. Pulled back into the here and now, Ianto collected his wits remarkably quickly with a few deep breaths. The blotchy colour began to fade from his cheeks, and with difficulty he forced out a quick, “It’s fine. I’m going now.”

Gwen took a step back and gave him room to get past her to the exit. He was gone in a flash, closing the door heavily behind him. She sighed, brushing stray hairs away from her face. Poor Ianto, this was so unfair for him; she was certain he’d ever really come to terms with Lisa’s death. She fervently wished for Jack to get home soon.

A slight movement caught her eye, and she turned her head to regard the prisoner.

She wasn’t sure what she’d expected — gloating, guilt, anger, embarrassment, indifference — but she was struck by the quiet resignation in the Doctor’s demeanour. He was once again sitting on the ground, leaning against the back wall. He had a thousand yard stare, every bit of cocky irreverence gone.

“Are you alright?” she asked.

After a long moment, he focused on Gwen. He gave her a thin smile, which lacked any levity. “Of course. You’d best look to Ianto. He could probably do with the company.” He nodded towards the exit, a clear request to be left alone.

She wavered for a moment, but then nodded. She made to depart, but paused when he called her name.

“When did you say Jack would be back?” he asked. His tone was mild, giving nothing away. His previous clownish façade and all his flippancy were gone.

When would Jack be back — he should have already been here, and the unexpected delay was making her nervous. The sooner he got back, the better. “He’s been delayed. He said he’d be back as soon as possible.”

He nodded. “I see. Thank you.” His jaw clenched, and she could see the muscles working under his skin. “I don’t know if it will make a difference to Ianto, but tell him I’m sorry. Really, truly sorry.”

She waited to see if he would say any more, but he closed his eyes and tipped his head back once again. She watched him for a moment, and then quietly left.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Ianto licks his wounds, the Doctor messes with Gwen's head, and Jack is still nowhere to be seen.

It was edging towards one in the morning and still no sign of Jack. She’d finally made the standard apologetic call home to Rhys around half twelve, waking him up from a deep sleep such that she barely got a muttered acknowledgement out of him before he hung up.

It’d been long enough that she was starting to desperately crave a shower and a change of clothes. Normally she’d dash home for a quick freshen up, not to mention a glimpse of her husband. However, it seemed unfair to leave Ianto alone with the responsibility of guarding the Doctor — she wasn’t she wanted to risk the outcome of that decision.

She hadn’t seen Ianto much since the cells. She’d found him in the firing range after she’d come up, doing target practice. He’d looked focused and absorbed in his chosen aggression outlet, so she’d left him to it. She was keeping an eye on internal security, but Ianto was keeping conspicuously busy with activities that kept him away from Gwen. She could take a hint — he didn’t want to talk about it. Fair enough, she supposed. She hoped he would confide in Jack, though she wasn’t entirely clear if their relationship included more than just pillow talk.

The reports on her screen were a halfhearted attempt to pretend to do work. Instead, she was flipping through hard copies of whatever she’d been able to find on the Doctor’s activities on Earth.

Oddly enough, there was very little. Most of the hard copies had been stored at Torchwood One in London. When it was destroyed, as far as she knew, Jack had headed the operation to scavenge and bring back archived alien technology as well as records. She had initially run a computer search, but other than a mention in the founding charter for Torchwood (and why had she had never read that, given that he was the reason for the founding of the Institute in the first place?) the records were eerily silent on the matter of the Doctor. She did find several files that looked promising, but they were frustratingly locked down under Jack’s personal access code.

Ianto had known and mentioned a few of the incidents Jack had referenced in the Doctor’s transfer. The records of the disasters did exist, but it was as if his involvement was expunged.

After expanding her search terms a bit, she found the odd mention here and there, but they seemed to be about a different man, possibly two different ones. One was mentioned a few times in connection with UNIT, and she’d found a hard copy of a photo of some staff with a tall gentleman dressed in something that made him look like Austin Powers, all ruffles and crushed velvet. He looked about fifty or sixty, whitish hair, but was only referred to as ‘Doctor — Scientific Liaison’ in the brief annotation scrawled on the back. Perhaps it was a mistake, some error, or shorthand for one of the many PhD’s working for UNIT.

She squinted at the photo, inspecting it closely. Something about his pose, his slightly anachronistic yet not-quite-right clothing choices, the expression and manner of confidence bordering on arrogance…

She sat back and rubbed her eyes. She was tired and looking for connections where there were none. She chided herself for her foolishness.

She looked at the clock, then at the security feeds — their prisoners were limited to the Doctor and two weevils at the moment, and all were awake still. Normally Jack did any required midnight food and/or security patrols, but it looked like that was up to her today. With a weary sigh, she pushed away from her desk and made from the tiny kitchen. The weevil food was foul enough to turn her stomach, so she’d leave that until after she prepared a tray for the Doctor.

She had to admit, she was looking forward to having another chat with her mystery guest.

 

***

 

“I’m going to guess… military of some sort. But you’re nice, so police officer, maybe.” the Doctor said, leaning against one wall in his cell. He had unbuttoned his jacket, but that seemed the only concession to comfort. “The thin blue line,” he said, overly enunciating the words as though tasting each one.

“Good guess.” She glanced at him nervously — perhaps he was merely extremely observant, but the thought crossed her mind that he might be psychic. She wasn’t eager to have someone rooting around in her head. To be on the safe side, she started singing a nursery rhyme in her head, a little trick that Jack had taught them as a simple way to confuse any passive telepathic scans. Gwen set the food tray in the slot beside the cell. A few buttons to push, then the device conveyed the food to the cell interior. The door popped open and the tray presented itself inside.

The man moved to scoop it up, and sat it on his small pallet bed. He sipped at the cup of tea, but left the food untouched. “Ah,” he said with a contented sigh. “Full marks for the tea.”

“You should eat something,” Gwen encouraged automatically. “Do you some good, put meat on your bones.”

The man snorted softly and sipped his tea again, relaxing back against the wall. “You sound like a friend of mine. Used to nag me constantly.” He tilted his head towards her, calm and assessing. His eyes were warm and friendly, reassuring. “I’m not starving myself. I burn nutrients more efficiently than humans. In here, not doing much, I don’t need to eat as much.”

“I see,” said Gwen, nodding. Passing him on the street, she wouldn’t have guessed in a million years that he wasn’t human. He seemed like a normal bloke, if a bit odd. She wondered if this was his true form, or a manifestation in order to fit in. “Do you always look like this?” she asked, unable to contain her curiosity.

He looked down at himself. “No. Sometimes I wear a blue suit. Tuxedo for formal occasions.” He looked up at her curiously. “Something wrong with the way I look?”

She felt suddenly awkward trying to explain herself. “I don’t — I didn’t mean clothes. I meant form. Your body — if you actually have a body.”

His eyebrows lifted impossibly high. “If I actually — “ he repeated in surprised disbelief, cutting himself off with a snort. “What an odd question. I’d think it quite clear I have a body.”

He sprung up out of his reclined position with unexpected speed and grace, and approached the thick plastic door of the cell. Gwen stumbled back a few steps in surprise. He probed one long finger through one of the air holes, wiggling it about. “Can’t exactly get out, can I?” he said with a lopsided smile that held no humour. The façade of friendliness was gone, as though he’d grown tired of playing the game of social politeness.

Gwen let out an uneasy breath that she hadn’t realized she was holding, suddenly grateful for the thick door between them. Even contained, something about him seemed powerful and larger than life.

“Right,” she finally managed. “Well, we do get all sorts here. Some of them only project human form.”

The man nodded, leaning a shoulder against the plastic shield between them. “Ah yes, I see. Well, basic bipedal form is a predominant trait amongst intelligent life in the galaxy, but not a strict requirement. Technology to mask and disguise that form is quite common. Shape-shifting, now that’s a bit special.” He gave her another one of those deep, assessing looks. “Now I can manage that, but it’s quite a production. Emergencies only.”

Gwen crossed her arms, feeling exposed under that piercing gaze. “You can completely change your shape?”

He tilted his head side to side in a considering motion. “Well, not exactly. Still with the basic business of bipedal, symmetrical form. But height, weight, colouring, all that — yeah.”

The image of the tall, wavy-haired UNIT liaison came to mind, and she wondered if perhaps she hadn’t been so far off in the first place. “Have you done it before?”

“Oh yeah, couple times.”

“Ever been a woman?”

He gave her a delighted grin, eyes sparkling. “You know, no one’s ever asked me that. Bet they’ve wondered, though. No, I haven’t. I suppose I could, but I rather fancy being a bloke. Used to it, after all these years.” He adjusted his tie and preened a bit, and gave her a little wink. “I’m happy with this go around. Works well for me, don’t you think?”

Gwen gave a snort and shook her head, hands settling on her hips. “As bad as Jack, you are.”

“I don’t think there is a being in this universe that can hold a candle to Captain Casanova.” His smile was personal, the kind two best friends share, and she found she was grinning along like mad. He leaned his forehead against the glass and his brown hair flattened down over his forehead, making him look incredibly young. His expression, however, was nowhere near innocent — he had a twinkle in his eye that was positively wicked. “So. Which one of you is sleeping with Jack? Or is it both?”

Her jaw dropped in disbelief. “That is absolutely none of your business!”

“No need to be offended, Miss Cooper.” He glanced down and then back up. “Or is it Missus?”

She looked at her hand and the wedding ring that sparkled there. “Six months, soon,” she answered automatically, and then kicked herself. Maybe it was time to go get a breather. She had completely lost control of this conversation, and she had no idea when. But it didn’t feel wrong — more like pyjama party confessions than leaking information to a dangerous alien prisoner.

“You know, where Jack’s from that doesn’t matter at all,” he said mildly. He looked up, indicating around them. “Even here, humans are starting to cotton on to the idea that love isn’t something that gets used up.”

That tantalizing tidbit of information seized her attention. What did this man know, and how well did he know Jack? She leaned against the glass, palms resting on the coolness of it, slightly warmer where his shoulder was pressed against the other side. “So you know where Jack’s from,” she asked, trying to keep her voice indifferent.

She fancied she could almost feel his breath as he spoke, only the door separating them. “Yes I do,” he replied, almost taunting her with the singsong tone. “And you don’t, it would seem. Interesting.”

Gwen strove for her most innocent, open expression, eyes wide and pleading, the expression that had always engendered cooperation from even the most recalcitrant people in her days on the force. She looked straight into his eyes, nose nearly pressed against the glass. “Please, tell me about it. Where is Jack from.” Her tone wasn’t a question; it was an invitation, a gentle order.

His eyes flicked back and forth as he examined her face. His expression softened slightly. “Oh, very well done. I bet that works really well for you, doesn’t it?”

She fluttered her eyelashes gently, striving to maintain the connection. “I don’t know what you mean. I only want to understand. Come on, you can tell me.”

He nodded with her, a soft smile on his lips. “I’d love to tell you, I really would. But it’s not my story to tell.” He raised his head off the glass, regarding her almost sadly. “You know, I’m pretty sure I met an ancestor of yours, once. She had your same knack. Bit more powerful, perhaps. I bet you don’t even realize.”

Gwen pulled back form the glass, unsettled once more. “Don’t realize what? My ancestor? My gran is the only one still alive beyond my parents’ generation.”

He smiled, and pushed off the glass, sitting himself in a disorderly pile on the small cot. “Must have been her then, eh?” He winked at her. “Couldn’t possibly have met your great-great-great grandmother on your father’s side, could I? That’d be, oh, what, say, one hundred and forty two years ago?”

She knew he was playing with her now, but it was drawing her in rather than setting off her innate bullshit detector. Whatever else the Doctor was, he was clearly an accomplished storyteller — which was just a nice way of saying consummate liar.

She folded her arms. “And what don’t I realize?” she asked dryly.

He tucked a finger over the knot of his tie, working it off and letting it hang loosely, and then undoing another button on his collar. “Your little interrogation technique, with the wide eyes and all that business.” He reclined against the wall and bent his knees to bring his feet up onto the bed. “Little bit of a push, just a nudge. Something that says, ‘trust me, talk to me.’” He raised one eyebrow at her. “I bet people always end up talking to you, don’t they?”

He had put her internal mantra into words, the thought and feeling she tried to hang onto when she was trying to win someone’s confidence. She wondered again if this bloke was plucking thoughts from her head and using them against her. “I’m a good listener,” she said shortly. “I have no idea what you’re implying beyond that. I don’t manipulate people.”

He shrugged. “As you like.”

She pressed her lips together tightly, feeling the anger bubbling in her. She didn’t know why she was letting this… this person get to her. Enough was enough, she wasn’t about to stand here letting him yank her chain. Who knows if anything he was saying was the truth. Without another word, she turned to leave the cells.

“Ask Jack.” His voice was clear and direct. She paused, hand outstretched for the heavy door to the cell block. “He can explain, if you really want to know.”

She frowned back over her shoulder, but from her current angle she couldn’t see into his cell. She presumed he was still relaxed on the bed, the smug bastard. He huffed an irritated sigh, angry with herself for letting anyone get to her like this, filling her head with silly ideas.

She flung open the heavy door, leaving the cell and the odd, lanky alien and their odd conversation behind them.

“Thanks for the tea,” she heard float through the door before it slammed closed.

She stormed upstairs, bound for more reports and several more large cups of coffee.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which everything goes to hell.

Gwen awoke with a snort, sitting bolt upright from where she’d slumped over her desk. Apparently the coffee hadn’t done its job — after a while, even caffeine couldn’t hold back the need for sleep. She peeled a paper off her cheek, which was glued on with a small patch of drool. She blinked to clear her gritty eyes, uncertain what had awakened her.

She nearly died of fright when a hand brushed her shoulder, but Ianto’s whispered voice came soon after. “Gwen, shush. Someone tripped one of the silent alarms in the back exit tunnel.”

She was on her feet before he finished speaking. He handed her a weapon, and she checked the chamber to make sure it was loaded. “Do you think it’s Jack? Sometimes he likes to mess around with us.”

Ianto shook his head, checking his own weapon. “No. Breached from the inside.” He leaned across her, tapped her keyboard and called up he security feed for the Doctor’s cell. It was empty.

“Oh shit,” she breathed. “How on Earth could he have gotten out? That’s impossible!”

Ianto scowled and turned to move out. “I said he wasn’t secure in there. Let’s stay together for now, split up if necessary.”

Gwen didn’t like the coiled tension present in Ianto’s posture. She put a hand on his arm. “Ianto. We should try to take him alive, if at all possible.”

He nodded tersely. “Of course.”

It was somehow a less than reassuring answer, but she released him and they began to quietly make their way through the direct passage that met the back exit tunnel at the parking garage. There was a soft buzz from Ianto’s handheld device, and they paused for a moment in the low light of the emergency passage.

“The alarm on the inner door to the parking garage just tripped. That means he’s in there — judging by his current rate of progress, we’ve got less than five minutes before he’s through the security on the external doors.”

Once he was outside, they’d have a hell of a time containing him, just the two of them on a stormy night. “We’ve only a minute or so before we’re there ourselves. We’ll split up, each take a side, of the garage, close in and catch him by surprise.”

Ianto nodded his agreement to the plan, and they were off.

They split up once they were directly under the garage. Ianto took one access ladder, which came up through a grated manhole, and Gwen jogged the hundred meters to the next one, which would bring her up through another grate on the other side of the only exit to the vehicle garage. They would each be briefly exposed as they climbed out, but they didn’t think the Doctor had opportunity to acquire any projectile weapons on his way down. His progress had been direct and alarmingly fast, and went nowhere near the armoury.

For her own part, Gwen couldn’t picture the Doctor threatening them with a weapon. She recalled him quickly unloading and discarding her gun in his first escape attempt, intent on leaving and causing her as little fright as possible. And from what she could understand of his crimes, it seemed to be broad strokes, violence through disaster more than acts perpetrated against individuals. She wasn’t particularly worried about a sniper shot to the head while scrambling out of a manhole.

Still, it was still a calculated risk, and she was a little nervous as she climbed the ladder. Torchwood’s number one enemy was loose in the base — that had a way of unsettling a person.

She checked her watch as she clung to the top of the ladder. She counted down to the agreed-upon time, and then tossed back the cover and scrambled up, gun in hand, as Ianto emerged from his own access point.

The garage was conspicuously empty. She glanced at Ianto, who nodded towards the SUV parked nearby. She made her way towards it to check behind and under it, but there was nowhere to hide, and nothing to find. She and Ianto split up and made a quick tour of the garage just in case, but found nothing. Gwen lowered her gun cautiously.

“Gwen, over here,” Ianto called. She turned towards him, and saw him pull a slip of yellow off the garage door. She trotted over to him as he examined it.

When she got closer, she could see it was one of the post-it notes from upstairs. On it, a barely legible scrawl in an unmistakable sparkly light blue ink — a gel pen that sat on her desk, one with a feathery blue puff on the end that Jack and Ianto took great joy in mocking her over. Ianto passed her the note wordlessly.

_Thanks for the tea and company. Sorry I couldn’t wait for Jack to get back, but pass along my best -The Doctor_

She stared at it, dumbfounded. “How did he get my pen?”

“Exactly how you’re thinking. He must have set up the alarms to lure us here.” They looked around the garage nervously, but there was still no sign of the Doctor or anything else untoward.

“Maybe I could sleep through him nicking a post-it note and a pen off my desk, but hacking our systems? Setting up a program to trip the alarms in sequence?”

Ianto crumpled the note in his hand, but then smoothed it out again, folded it, and put it into his vest pocket. “I don’t know. Maybe he’s already out.” He let out an angry curse and kicked the wall, and then paced away from Gwen. He rubbed his hands over his eyes, trying to collect himself.

Gwen looked at the garage door, trying to see if there were any signs of force. “But what, he raced up here, planted a note, then-“

She was cut off by a beep from Ianto’s device. His eyebrows shot up, and before Gwen could even ask, he broke into a sprint towards the SUV. “Come on!” he shouted. “He doubled back on us — the lift to the Plass just activated. We can cut him off at ground level!”

Gwen dashed around the far side of the vehicle as Ianto started the engine, and they accelerated towards the exit. “I never thought I’d be glad that lift was so bloody slow,” Gwen said as she gripped the handle above her head tightly. Ianto twisted the wheel sharply as the SUV shot out of the exit, and they careened around the corner.

Rain pounded the windshield, whipped by wind. It was a quick thirty seconds and two shortcuts across pedestrian paths and a flight of stairs before Ianto brought them to a squealing halt by the lift exit. The perception filter worked well on passers-by, but for those who knew what they were looking for, it was easy to spot the stone slab lift. A faint glow indicated it was still open and in transit. Gwen and Ianto both leapt out of the vehicle, taking either side of the lift.

Gwen pulled out her gun, adjusting her grip carefully. The rain was practically driving sideways, soaking her to the bone in seconds. She blinked water from her eyes, focusing on the square of light.

Across from her, Ianto stood braced alongside the water tower, coat whipping in the brutal wind. He could see farther into the lift from his vantage point, and she knew he’d spotted the Doctor when he tensed and repositioned his aim.

“Put your hands in the air!” Ianto shouted, voice cutting through the wind.

The Doctor slowly rose up — hands appearing first, followed shortly by the rest of him. His hair plastered against his head in the downpour, and the fabric of his suit was darkening quickly as it became wet. He turned towards Ianto, palms forward, hands waving a little. Ianto backed up a step and widened his stance. The Doctor looked back over his shoulder at Gwen, then half-turned so that he had one hand to each of them.

“Alright, my hands are up. You can see I don’t have anything. You don’t need the guns. Let’s put them down before somebody gets hurt.” His expression was earnest and sincere. He met Gwen’s gaze, and she was surprised at how calm he was — quite a feat for someone with two guns pointed at him in the middle of his attempted jailbreak.

Gwen raised her voice, shouting over the storm. “Put your hands behind your head and kneel on the ground,” she ordered. She tried to catch Ianto’s eye, but he was focused intently on the Doctor.

The Doctor, for his part, was staring back at Ianto, squinting as the rain whipped in his face. “Right, all right. I’m going to do that, calmly and completely predictably. This is me, kneeling and complying. No need for anyone to be nervous.”

His voice was calm and soothing despite being projected over the storm, and the tension seemed to bleed from Gwen’s body at his reassuring words. He knelt low, dropping one knee to the ground. He looked at her questioningly, as though asking if she were okay. She didn’t reply, but he nodded as if she had.

On his knees, hands still flat and raised defensively, he swiveled back to Ianto. Gwen tucked her weapon away and grabbed at the handcuffs hooked to her belt.

“How about it, Ianto Jones?” she heard the Doctor ask. “Why don’t you put the gun away? I’m not going anywhere.”

She unlatched the cuffs, stepping forward, but froze when she looked at Ianto. He was gripping the gun so hard that his entire arm was shaking. He was heaving great shuddering breaths, shifting back and forth nervously on the balls of his feet.

She’d seen that look before. As a police officer she’d seen that look one too many times, and it always ended very, very badly. She’d seen it on the face of scared teens backed into a corner, about to make the most terrible mistake of their lives. The look of someone psyching themselves up to pull the trigger, to use the weapon, to just do it and consequences be damned.

Ianto was going to shoot him — a man kneeling on the ground, surrendered.

“Ianto, love. Think about what you’re doing,” Gwen said, taking another step towards the Doctor.

“I am,” Ianto said, words nearly lost in the wind. “I have. There’s nowhere to keep him, you can see that.” The gun in his hand dropped with water, drops shaking off as his hand trembled. “He has to be stopped.”

She stepped closer, and Ianto twitched the gun nervously. She held up the cuffs, and reached slowly out to snap one over the wrist of one of the Doctor’s upraised arms. The Doctor was rigid with tension, belying his outward calm. “Look, see? He’s surrendered, it’s okay. You can’t kill a man in cold blood, Ianto. That’s not you. Don’t make yourself into that person.” She stared Ianto down, willing him to listen as she slowly reached for the Doctor’s other wrist.

Ianto shook his head, adjusting his grip again with anxious tension. “Back up, Gwen.”

Gwen was about to speak again when a grating noise rose above the howl of the storm, a wheeze like machinery breathing, fading in and out and growing louder and louder. The wind whipped harder, changed directions and swirled around them in a cyclone. She threw her arms up to protect her face; turning away from the stinging gusts, and saw Ianto doing the same.

When it settled back down, she looked down to the Doctor — but he was gone. She turned wildly, trying to locate him in the dark night.

“There!” Ianto shouted, pointing beyond her shoulder.

The Doctor was making for a bright blue blocky shape that had appeared in the Plass, arms and legs pumping in a flat-out sprint. At her side, Ianto leveled his gun, marking his target with determination.

“For god’s sake Ianto, don’t kill him!” Gwen cried out, wiping drenched hair from her face.

He spared her a quick glance, and then shifted back to the Doctor. He squeezed off a shot and the Doctor collapsed, falling mere feet short of his goal and striking the doors of the blue shed as he went down — a police box, Gwen could see now as they ran closer.

Before they made it to the Doctor and the mysterious police box, one of the doors flung open. Gwen and Ianto both stumbled to a halt and aimed their weapons, ready to face whatever threat was about to-

“Jack?” Gwen gaped.

Jack, illuminated from behind by a soft, golden light, stepped through the doors. He squinted at the rain in his face. “What are you two doing out here?”

“Took you long enough! What were you doing, having a quilting circle up there?” The Doctor hissed the words through clenched teeth, dragging himself upright to lean against the blue door.

The words snapped Jack’s attention downward. “Doctor!” he cried, kneeling. He glared up at Gwen and Ianto, fury evident. “What the hell is going on?” He gathered the Doctor up in his arms and stood. The Doctor was pale and gasping in pain, clutching at his thigh where Ianto had shot him. Jack glared at them, eyes blazing. “Stand down. Put those weapons away right now!”

Gwen lowered her gun, but didn’t holster it. “Jack, what is going on?”

Jack ignored her, shouldering his way through the door with the Doctor. The Doctor’s leg bumped the door and he gave out a strangled cry. “Bloody hell, Jack! I’ve just been shot, have a care!”

“Sorry, Doctor,” Jack replied. He maneuvered them the rest of the way in, and from inside called out to Gwen and Ianto, sounding disturbingly far away. “Come inside. Sit down, wait, and don’t touch anything!” His voice faded with the sound of receding, clanking footsteps, accompanied by the Doctor’s pained protests.

Gwen looked at Ianto, who was pale and shivering and looking very lost, staring after Jack with hurt and betrayal. She shook her head. This made as much sense as anything did when Jack was involved. She tucked her weapon away, then flipped the safety on Ianto’s gun and gently pried it out of his frozen grip.

She started towards the open door, pulling Ianto after her. “Well, come on. It’s better than standing out here in the rain.”

They stepped through the door into a cavernous room. Gwen stared around in shock, unable to reconcile what she was seeing with the tiny exterior of the box.

Beside her, Ianto cleared his throat. “Well, then.”

“Yes,” she agreed, still staring upwards. “I think Jack owes us an explanation, don’t you?”

“Oh yes,” he said. “Yes, I’d say so.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In an orgy of exposition, all is revealed!

Eventually, Gwen and Ianto settled themselves on a seat that looked like it had been scavenged from an old car from the ‘70s. Bits of duct tape covered over cracks in the vinyl, and she idly picked at one while Ianto sat stiffly at her side, staring at the pulsating column that dominated the room like a giant, glowing hookah. She felt like they were naughty school children waiting for their scolding outside the headmaster’s office.

If the headmaster were an immortal man with an office in a box that was bigger on the inside, of course.

“What the hell were you two playing at?” Jack’s voice was like the crack of the whip. Gwen turned to see him striding through the arch opposite the doors to the outside, blood staining his shirtfront and sleeves. He’d discarded his long coat somewhere in the ten minutes or so since he’d been gone. “Leave him be, I said. What was so goddamned hard to understand about that?”

Gwen felt her jaw drop. “Jack, he tried to escape — twice! We were doing our job!” She slid off the seat and rose to face him.

“Your job wasn’t to shoot him!” he snapped. He stopped in front of them, arms folded across his chest, face grim. “Who did it?” he asked again, looking between them. “Who shot him? He wouldn’t tell me, for some reason.”

Gwen frowned at Jack as Ianto looked away. “Jack, you need to explain what’s going on-“

“My question first!” he barked, and Gwen pulled back from his intense fury. “Who shot him?”

 

“I did,” Ianto rose to face Jack. His words were flat, but it was a clear challenge. Jack growled angrily and started for him. Ianto flinched slightly but his expression didn’t change and he held his ground as Jack closed on him.

“Don’t you dare, Jack Harkness!” Before it came to blows, Gwen threw herself in front of Jack and shoved him forcefully back, planting herself between him and Ianto. “You have no idea what you just put Ianto — put us through. We did our bloody job, and if you don’t like it, that’s your problem. This whole situation is your fault, so don’t you dare take this out on him!”

Jack glared at her but she stared him down, her chest heaving with righteous indignation. Eventually he broke off with a frustrated noise and turned away, pacing around the platform surrounding the central column like a caged tiger. Gwen watched him warily, waiting to see if there would be another outburst, but he was silent as he paced. After a long moment he got himself under control and circled back around to them. He stopped in front of Ianto, who was tight-lipped and pale.

“I’m sorry,” Jack said gruffly. Ianto’s gaze snapped to Jack, surprise briefly breaking his façade of icy stoicism, then he looked away again. “I’m sorry I forgot about Torchwood One — about Lisa.” Jack approached him hesitantly and set a hand gently on Ianto’s cheek. “It’s complicated — but it wasn’t the Doctor’s fault. I would have tried to explain, but there was no time, Yan.”

Ianto’s face softened infinitesimally at the diminutive, but his body was still stiff with tension. His gaze was focused somewhere over Jack’s shoulder, and he seemed defiantly intent on not acknowledging Jack’s presence.

Jack looked between the two of them, brow knit, and he leaned back against the console and crossed his arms. “I suppose I should thank you for not killing him,” Jack said lightly.

“He’ll live, then?” Ianto said at last, his words sharp and brittle. He raised one eyebrow. “Shame.”

Jack’s jaw clenched painfully as he gave Ianto a hard look. He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Yes. He’s fixing himself up now. And since I know you could shoot the spots off a ladybug at thirty paces if you wanted to, I’ll say again — thank you.”

Ianto pressed his lips together in a thin line and tipped his head towards Gwen. “Thank her.”

Jack nodded. “Okay, fair enough. Anyway, I’m sorry I didn’t have time to explain before we got caught up in this mess.”

Gwen poked Jack in the centre of his chest. “Right then, start explaining now. You hand us ‘the most dangerous criminal in Earth’s history,’ send us away without any context, background information, nothing — who is he, Jack?” From behind Jack, a light blinked at her from the console, and she realized it was the actual blinker from a vehicle. She pointed at it accusingly. “And what the bloody hell is that supposed to be?” She twisted around to look at the bizarre, slightly organic looking room, and then back to Jack. “This is….this is freaky, Jack! Are you in the habit of keeping police boxes with secret bases inside them? Never thought to share that with us?”

Ianto leaned forward and poked at something on other side of the console. “I think this is a bicycle pump.”

“Right, secret base made up of scavenged trash from the skip,” she retorted, directing all her anger and frustration at Jack.

“Oi, leave off my ship! You’ll hurt her feelings.”

The Doctor was walking up the stairs in a fresh suit that was exactly the same as his previous one. More alarmingly, he was completely uninjured. He gave them all a brilliant smile, adjusting his shirt cuffs and giving a little shrug of his shoulders to settle his jacket. Gwen looked carefully at his leg. The pinstriped trousers should have been tight enough to reveal any bandaging or splinting, but there was nothing apparent.

The Doctor noticed her gaze and bounced a little on his feet, then lifted his leg and gave it a kick. “Good as new — tissue regenerator. What a lifesaver! Literally, I suppose. Can’t say the same for my suit, though. Total loss — hole clean through, and that blood will never come out.” Jack made a low noise, and the Doctor narrowed his eyes at him in an assessing manner. “But, no harm done. Right, Jack?” The Doctor held Jack’s gaze until Jack let out a long, cleansing breath. His shoulders dropped and relaxed, and he nodded at the Doctor.

Gwen raised an eyebrow — whoever this man was, he certainly had quite a hold over Jack. “This is your… ship, then?” she asked, nodding to the weird glowing column and console dominating the room.

“Yep!” he said proudly. “Though I hadn’t intended to bring you aboard, I suppose I wouldn’t mind giving a little tour.” He extended his arm to the little archway behind him in a magnanimous, welcoming gesture.

She folded her arms. “I think I’d like an explanation first,” Gwen said stiffly. Jack chuckled softly to himself, shaking his head.

The Doctor tipped his head back with a weary sigh. “Humans. You’re so very pedantic.” He looked over at Jack. “They’re your team - why should I have to explain this, exactly?”

“Because you’re still here,” Jack said with a pleased grin. “Frankly, I thought you’d be long gone by the time I got back.”

The Doctor looked irritated and sulky. “Yes, well, that was the idea.”

“So? How’d you get out of the cells, anyway?” Jack asked, leaning forward eagerly. “I figured you’d find a way out of there, but I haven’t been able to do it myself yet.”

“I’m not here to troubleshoot your security, Jack. Figure it out yourself,” the Doctor said imperiously, but then he glanced at Gwen and Ianto with a frown. “But blimey, you laid it on a bit thick, didn’t you?”

“Where’s the fun in escaping if there’s no challenge?” Jack gave him a lopsided grin, though he did seem slightly sheepish. “You know how the Nitlott are — I had to make it either death of a family member or act of war to supersede the prior claim. Oddly enough, almost destroying the planet multiple times doesn’t count for much — they consider that an act of god. Proof of your presence at Torchwood One was quick and easy for me to come by, and it’s….” he sighed and glanced at Ianto, “easily misinterpreted. It counted under their rules. After all the fuss I made, I had to follow through and make it good.”

Ianto, who had gone still and silent with the Doctor’s entrance, walked away from them to the far side of the console, his arms wrapped tightly around himself. Gwen watched him with concern, but Jack seemed willing to let him go.

“Besmirching of my character aside, unfortunately your staff are rather more competent than either you or I apparently gave them credit for.” The Doctor rubbed at his head, wincing at the tender spot where Ianto had clocked him.

Gwen stared at the Doctor, then at Jack. “Was this just a big joke to the two of you? Are you both mad?” The two men looked at each other in an excellent impression of two little boys, caught red-handed stealing cookies. “Jack, who is this man, and what is going on?” she roared.

Jack set his hands on her shoulders, giving her a patient look. “This is the Doctor. He’s probably saved the lives of you and everyone on Earth more times than you can count.”

“I’m blushing,” the Doctor said, flopping into the seat and sticking his feet up on the console.

“And,” Jack continued, rolling his eyes at the Doctor, “he’s an old friend of mine. I used to travel with him.”

A conversation from ages ago tickled Gwen’s memory. “Is this your Doctor? The one who dragged you of to god-knows-where? The one you abandoned us for?” She poked him in the chest again. “Don’t you know anyone normal, Jack?”

Jack sighed. “Bugger off to the end of time just once, and you never hear the end of it. I came back then, I came back now. All I’m asking is for you to trust me once in a while. I didn’t think it would go down like this.”

Jack looked to her for her understanding. She stared back defiantly, but she couldn’t help the distress and betrayal that leaked through her anger. Jack could see it, and his appeasing tone shifted to actual regret and apology. “Gwen, I’m sorry. I mean it, okay?” He pulled her close and wrapped his arms around her, kissing the top of her head.

She held herself stiff for a moment, then relaxed and let her cheek rest against Jack’s chest. “You’re going to go too far one day, Jack. You ask us to trust you, but you have to trust us too.” She looked up into Jack’s face. He smiled gently, and she felt her anger soften. She shook her head ruefully and pulled out of Jack’s arms, wiping quickly at the one tear that had escaped her.

The Doctor was watching the proceedings with a keen eye — it more than curiosity, almost longing. He quickly shook it off though, waggling his feet and clearing his throat. “I think it’s fair to say that your captain did me a favour. Seems that some people with no sense of humour — and I ask you, who can’t find the humour in an exploding cake at a royal coronation? — put out a warrant for my arrest. The Nitlott had the good luck to pick me up just as I was having a picnic lunch on the moon. Their good luck, my bad, I suppose.” He gave Jack a sour look as Jack failed to suppress a smirk. “That’s more than enough of your cheek, Captain. Everyone has an off day now and again.”

“On the moon,” Gwen said flatly.

“Yes, on the moon. Earthrise is lovely; always puts me in a good mood.” the Doctor said with a raised eyebrow, as though challenging her to disagree. “There’s now a picnic basket at the lunar landing site to commemorate the aborted event.”

Jack spoke up. “The Nitlott sent a message after they picked you up to notify the warrant holders, which this intercepted-“ he lifted his arm to indicate his wrist strap, “-and I managed to convince them Torchwood had the greater claim. Of course, the sizeable bribe didn’t hurt.”

The Doctor leaned back in his chair, stretching. “I maintain that given a little more time, I would have worked out a way out of there.”

Jack clasped his hands behind his back, rocking on his feet. “And I managed to spring the TARDIS, at great extra cost to myself and Torchwood.” He gave the Doctor a pointed look.

The Doctor sighed loudly. “Alright, yes, thank you O Great and Mighty Jack Harkness, Saviour of the Day.”

“Any of this would have been great to know beforehand.” Gwen rubbed at her forehead, trying to forestall the headache that threatened. “You can’t keep going off half-cocked like this, Jack. We’re supposed to be a team.”

“Gwen, I adore you to bits, but I have never managed to explain something to you without at least 2 hours of follow-up questions. By the time I figured out what was going on, there wasn’t time to do more than grab you both as backup and jump. After that, there was no chance. The Nitlott are a little bit paranoid and a lot nasty — I wanted our dealings to be as simple and clean as possible.”

Gwen looked at Jack unhappily. “You could have tried. We’re not stupid, Ianto and me. I thought by now you’d have a little more faith in us. It’s just the three of us, Jack. We need each other. You have to talk to us.”

Jack nodded. “Yeah, I know.” He looked up at the Doctor, an oddly tender look on his face. “It took me by surprise. I guess I wasn’t thinking.”

She followed Jack’s gaze to the Doctor, who was carefully pretending to pick lint off the sleeve of his jacket. She was beginning to suspect that when it came to the Doctor, Jack did a lot of leaping before he looked.

“And you,” she said to the Doctor, who looked up at her with exaggerated innocence. “You’ve got some kind of death wish. I have no idea what you were thinking, taking off like that.”

The Doctor glanced sidelong at Ianto, then back to Gwen. Ianto was a knot of tension, staring fixedly at the console with a cold, blank look. She looked back at the Doctor, who merely raised an eyebrow. Point taken.

Gwen sighed in defeat. “Anyway, try to be a little more patient next time you’re extradited under sham charges for crimes against humanity. Or is all that made-up nonsense as well?”

The Doctor stood up, sniffing in disdain. “Sometimes history is written by the sore losers.” He approached the console, leaning to crank a large dial and flip a bank of switches. “Or the unappreciative bystanders. No one knows how to be grateful these days. I’m usually just cleaning up other peoples’ messes.”

“And your own,” Jack chimed in.

The Doctor gave him a dark look. “And yours too, eh?”

Jack, to her utter astonishment, looked deeply embarrassed. She had never seen him look embarrassed — didn’t think he was physically capable of it. However, he looked humbled under the weight of the Doctor’s disapproval.

“You’re still a murderer.” Ianto’s voice cut through the conversation, his tone cold and hard.

“Ianto!” Jack barked sharply, but the Doctor held up a hand and forestalled any further comment from Jack. Gwen cursed Jack silently for his insensitivity, for dragging Ianto needlessly through his painful memories without explanation or warning. She was about to berate Jack for his thoughtlessness when the Doctor spoke.

“Ianto. I am really, very sorry.” His words were heavy and sad, and brought a stillness to the room.

Ianto was still staring at the console, hands gripping the edge painfully. “She was half-converted — you could have helped her,” he ground out.

“If that’s true, then no one could have helped her. Not me if I’d stayed, not anyone.” He stepped around the console and put a hand on Ianto’s shoulder, his voice terribly gentle. “Not even you.”

He finally met the Doctor’s kind eyes. Ianto glared at him until his angry mask crumbled and he turned away, curling in on himself. Jack was quickly there to pull him into a hug, murmuring soothing words that she couldn’t make out. Ianto said nothing, but Gwen thought she saw his shoulders shake as he buried his face in the crux of Jack’s neck.

Gwen let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. She wasn’t entirely sure how Jack and Ianto’s relationship worked, or how they managed with the myriad of issues between them — or sometimes whether they’d kiss or kill each other — but it was clear that Jack did care about Ianto. Hopefully he’d know how to take care of him now. Ianto, for his part, clung to Jack like he was a life raft.

The Doctor backed off to give them their moment, watching them with a faint, wistful smile as Jack kissed Ianto on the neck and stroked his back.

Gwen came to stand beside the Doctor. “Who are you, really? Where are you from, what do you do? Why are you here, on Earth?”

He looked down at her, and bumped his shoulder against hers. “You really do ask a lot of questions, Gwen Cooper.” He shook his head and shrugged. “Honestly, there’s not much to tell about me — I happen to travel with a lot of humans, so I end up kicking around your planet quite a bit.” He smiled at her, eyes twinkling. “You know, there’s a lot more to this universe than the flotsam and jetsam that falls through the Rift, all of it far more worthy of your questions than I am.” He lowered his voice, his tone full of teasing temptation. “I could show you. Call it an apology, if you like. Have you home in time for tea.”

She looked at him, at his playful grin, then around at the golden interior of the room, pulsing and alien. It was vast in and of itself, and that little archway to the corridor spoke of much, much more beyond. She glanced at Jack, still holding Ianto but casting an observing eye over at her and the Doctor. The entire situation was unreal, teetering on the edge between insanity and ridiculous escapade. She wondered how many humans had wandered through here, wide-eyed at the majesty and magic, willing to forget or unable to see the darkness beneath it all — Ianto with his broken heart, the chaos that followed the Doctor that he still hadn’t completely denied, Jack and his blind, thoughtless devotion — all this, trailing in the Doctor’s wake.

And despite all that, she still found the Doctor to be fascinating and compelling enough, and the whole situation was crazy enough, that it was tempting to let herself get swept away too…

But still. Gwen wasn’t naïve enough to believe in magic anymore. Torchwood had definitely taken care of that. She drew in a deep breath, looking back to his confident, childishly gleeful expression. “So you’re Peter Pan, then - playing at pirates and adventure.” She wrinkled her nose and shrugged. “I think I’m a bit old for Neverland, ta.”

His grin dimmed and his eyes lost that sparkle, but a smile remained and his demeanour was still warm and friendly. “Ah, adulthood. Terrible affliction, but it does happen to the best of us.”

Despite herself, she smiled and lightly punched him in the arm. She couldn’t help it — he had an unerring way of disarming people. “You’re absolutely daft, you know that.”

He made a big show of clutching his arm. “You wound me, Gwen Cooper.”

She glanced over at Jack and Ianto. They were standing close together, chatting quietly. Ianto seemed calmer, and Jack was solicitous in his attentions. Jack looked perfectly at home in this incredible ship, unconcerned by their surroundings. “He trusts you. Jack, he believes in you. Enough that he thought nothing of putting us all through this.” She looked back at the Doctor. “He doesn’t believe in anyone.”

“No accounting for tastes,” the Doctor said, tucking his hands in his pockets. He was pensive for a moment, but with another of his quick shifts of mood he clapped his hands together loudly, making Gwen jump. “Right, that’s that sorted! Time for me to be rolling along, my fine Torchwood friends. So thanks, bygones, all that!” He slapped a button on the hopelessly cluttered console and the doors to the outside popped open with a creak. The Doctor bounced on the balls of his feet expectantly, giving meaningful looks towards the doors.

Jack took the hint and began shepherding her and Ianto out, but he quickly doubled back to the Doctor. “Take care of yourself, okay?” He pulled the skinny man in for a bear hug, nearly lifting him off his feet.

The Doctor made an exaggerated face and a loud noise of complaint, but a soft, indulgent look quickly broke through and he returned the hug. “You too, Jack.”

With that, they were off. In seconds they were outside again, staring at the impossibly small confines of a very normal, though anachronistic, blue police box. It began to pulse and wheeze its way into nonexistence, eventually fading with a rippling echo. Jack, Gwen and Ianto stood alone in the empty Plass, shoulder to shoulder. Mercifully the rain had stopped, and the lights glimmering off the rain-slicked world lent an appropriate unearthliness to the night.

Jack slung an arm around each of them and pulled them in. “So, I figure I owe you guys a drink.”

Ianto harrumphed, wiping at his still damp cheeks. “Two. Five. Followed by lunch, dinner, and clean-up duty for the next month.”

Jack laughed, but squeezed them both a little tighter, dropping a kiss on Ianto’s forehead. Gwen let herself tuck comfortably into Jack’s side as he swung them around to cross the Plass.

“Actually,” Gwen said as they walked, “I have one more question.”

“Just one?” Jack said, looking down at her with a knowing grin.

“Okay, the first of many,” she allowed. “But it was something the Doctor said to me in the Hub - about a knack I had with interrogation. He said you’d explain if I asked you.”

Jack looked at her with sharp surprise. “He what? It’s barely anything, why would he even-“ He cut himself off, looking a bit haggard. “Well there’s a can of worms I’d hoped to never open. Come on, let’s go hit the diner. I’ll add it to the list — but first, let’s start with the story of what really happened at Torchwood One.” He sighed. “I have a feeling it’s going to be a long night…”

 

END

**Author's Note:**

> In the Doctor Who world, this takes place between Season 3 and Season 4, during the Doctor's lone travel time. It's after Season 2 and before Journey's End and COE for the Torchwood folks - therefore no Owen or Tosh. I'm pushing continuity canon a bit on this one - for my purposes, the Doctor hasn't met Jack's Torchwood team.
> 
> This is an old story I wrote out by hand while in/on planes, trains, and automobiles. Finally typed it up and gave it a tune-up. For the most part, it is a rather silly story; however, some angst snuck its way in there. It's unbeta'd, so all mistakes are mine, everything from spelling errors to mangled and incorrect usage of British slang.


End file.
